2012

How is it possible that it's almost April of 2012?? I remember as a kid thinking how SLOOOOOOW the year took to go by (mostly because i was always counting down until my birthday and Christmas) and now it seems like the year flies by before i can blink. guess that means i'm getting old. boo.

We are pretty boring. I read all these fun, insightful blogs thinking of how exciting and glamorous everyone's lives are (seriously, does nobody else work these days?? kidding. kidding) and then think we are pretty boring (i guess thats the trap of blogs huh...oh well).

We pretty much sleep, wake up, work, watch our shows, and repeat the process. We have managed to sneak in some fun things here and there though, with some exciting things to look forward to.

.we celebrated our 1st anniversary! woohoo! it was on a sunday (boring city!) so we went to church. and now that we are in april i can't even remember what we did on saturday to celebrate (probably went out to eat somewhere yummy).

.we got a puppy (for christmas) and have loved (and hated) potty training and making her all ours. She is quite cute and we love her to pieces. Chris can often be found repeating "i love her. I really love her" on different occasions. should i be worried?? marley girl successfully nuggles in right between chris and i almost every night and is pretty content to be on our heels wherever we go. can't complain :]





.we moved from our little apartment into my parents old house and have been there for about a month now and will be moving (most likely back in with my parents...see i told you, we're glamourous) until we figure out what we are doing with our lives.

.i worked in real estate for a whopping three months and decided i mostly hated it (the office part, not the real estate part) and promptly quit with almost no back up plan. luckily things fell into place and i am now working as an instructional assistant to a 4th grade boy with asperger's who loves video games, batman, and snack time. I LOVE hanging out with him for 3 hours each day and hope that he loves it too. I also work at my uncles tax office. he hooked us up with a sweet tax return (hello dolla dolla bills!) and we are really tempted to buy hawaii plane tickets but go back and forth between being responsible (boring city!) and splurging on a fun trip.

.chris is moving up the ladder at olive garden and will hopefully be working towards management positions in the near future. also, he wants to move to kentucky for grad school. once a southern boy, always a southern boy. he receives compliments on the weekly, and our favorite one came in last night...



it's all good unknown guest, i think Chris is "damn good people" too

Other than that, we have enjoyed a super mild winter (woohoo!!), bought a new car, and are looking forward to a long weekend trip to DISNEYLAND!



I hope to update more and not always do "life updates" when i post.
Shout out to my best friend britt in spain, thanks for the reminder that i haven't posted since last year :] love ya!

"I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas...."

ok. not really. i'm perfectly content with a christmas sans snow, although it is pretty.

i suck at blogging. i was texting my sister in law about a certain christmas gift that we (chris and I) received in the mail today from his grandparents in tennessee, and she said i should blog about it. annnnd now that i've uploaded all of these pictures that picture isn't even here. note. we got a country ham. its pretty funny (and i think chris is actually pretty stoked on it). i'll have to do another post about it. and yes...the box smells like ham. poor delivery man. haha

we have, like always, been busy. so instead of going into detail about everything, i'll let the pictures do the talking with a brief rundown.

In the last month or so we

.spent thanksgiving in beautiful and relaxing lake tahoe at a cozy cabin
.put up christmas decorations....our first christmas tree. i love it!!
.made homemade christmas candy (long time family tradition)and looked at christmas lights
.celebrated the husbands birthday at Lucille's, a yummy southern restaurant
.traveled to Las Vegas and St George (my mom and I) for a good friends BEAUTIFULLLL wedding. really. it was perfection.

We have had a crazy whirlwind year (uhhh what happened to 2011???) and have been so fortunate and blessed. Can't believe we are coming up on our one year anniversary!! whoa baby!

Merry Christmas (lets get real, i'll probably not blog again before then....) Enjoy the pictures.





















note...if you are ever in vegas or st george (or parts of utah) you MUST get custard at Nielsen's. its to.die.for.


the beautiful wedding. after the ring ceremony, as they were walking down the aisle, baby bunnies were released. it was so adorable and perfect!

YUM!

Last night i tried a new recipe and after devouring our plates (i mean...eating like civilized adults) Chris looked at me and declared it "one of his top five favorites", or something like that....its that good!

I shared a picture of it via instagram and had a request to put it here on the blog. you'll thank me later!!

HERE is the recipe. I'm a lover of pretty much every tin foil dinner I have ever had. This did NOT dissapoint. If you try it, let me know if you liked it, or added or subtracted anything...

Oh and the best part...it took me about fifteen minutes to prepare (thawed chicken while cooking bacon, then assembled) and took about 35 minutes in the oven.

NOTE. Chris hates ranch. This recipe calls for the use of some ranch, so i just omitted that part, added a little salt and pepper, and it still had a ton of flavor (and truthfully, even though i like ranch, i don't think i'll use it in this recipe). Also, I didn't follow exact measurements when it came to putting stuff in the foil (helllllooooo bacon...yum) and it was still so delicious!!

Life 'n Stuff

We have been BUSY! Is it just me or has this year literally FLOWN by?! I can't belive Thanksgiving is just over a week away and that Christmas will soon be upon us!

Some updates:
-I started a new job at a real estate office. It's a good learning experience and I'm really grateful to have a job with consistent hours and pay (40 hours a week)
-Real estate is a foreign language. its been quite the adjustment trying to figure out all the lingo and abreviations...and i thought our church acronyms were bad! ha!
-i don't love it, but thats ok because i'm learning something new and yada yada :]
-i celebrated turning 24 the beginning of this month


-Chris just started an AIT (administrator in training) program at a nursing home facility with a good family friend of ours (who happens to be a MAJOR big wig in the CA association of nursing homes ie President of the entire thing) SO he is learning the ropes at a really awesome facility from a really smart and connected person.
-he works double duty pretty much every day with no days off (still working at the olive garden serving AND now working the ait job....)he is working really hard and i'm really grateful for that, even though we sometimes don't cross paths until about 10 at night....right in time to go to bed and start the whole process over the next day!!
-he is loving all the football on tv when he gets a chance to sit down and watch it (and i'm a little bit thankful that there is ONLY football to compete with this year instead of football AND basketball :])

Now some pictures....

We celebrated my bithday at a yummy little mexican restaurant in downtown sac. It was delicious and they even brought me a yummy dessert with a sparkler on it and sang to me in spanish. so fun!


I got spoiled with a pretty new white iphone! I was soooo excited. I've had a stupid old phone for a loooong time now and was definitely do for an upgrade (lets just say the old phone would randomly turn off mid text, mid call, mid anything...it was NOT awesome)


We celebrated 11:11 in style. This is chris's work celebration at the nursing home. they stay classy with 11:11 twix bars and sprite shots!


I even captured the moment on my phone and got a cute text from the hubs!


As I was going through my iPod touch to see what I wanted to carry over to my phone, i came across these pictures that we used for our wedding video! us as littles! maybe our future littles will have deliciously chubby cheeks and big puppy dog eyes?! here's to hoping :]


And lastly...happy 10 months of marriage! Seems SOOOO crazy that we are already at 10 months. I still feel like we just got married! and that we just moved back to the mainland from our newlywed tropical island bliss!


also...if you don't have the instagram app yet...get it!

UTAH....

my little sister use to call utah "mytah" funny huh.

anyways. we took a long weekend trip and made our way across the desert of nevada to the great Salt Lake. Chris's parents were in town from Tennessee so we met them "halfway" and ended up at general conference. not too shabby eh. we had a blast, ate WAAAAAAAAAY too much (i don't know if i'll ever recover), attended possibly the best come back BYU game i've ever experienced, and were spiritually uplifted by the wonderful leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Doesn't get much better, eh?


this is how the morning drive started out...i knew i was in for a long weekend filled with lots of food.


isn't is beautiful. SIKE! also...has anyone successfully figured out what that weird statue is in the middle of the salt flats?


my cousin kate and her cute boy tommy. so glad i got to meet up with her awesome family for some YUMMY cafe rio!


isn't my husband cute? i sorta like him.


sat REALLLLLY close at the byu game (like 2 rows up in the end zone...where they scored the winning touchdown in the last 15 seconds of the game. it was AWESOME!)


the beautiful conference center! ps. we totally made it on tv during the sunday morning congregational hymn. we are stars.


walked around temple square. so beautiful


and decided that THIS was the breakfast of champions for the drive home. the cashier was so distracted by all this junk she initially forgot to ring up our two waters. see...we ARE healthy.

all in all, a wonderful weekend spent with wonderful people. here's to a break from reality, and to starting a new job full time on monday...yikes!

BACK!

He's back! after a few days in Tennessee and i'm so happy. This was the first we have been apart since we have been married and i missed him!

He landed in San Francisco, so we couldn't pass up an opportunity to eat some of our favorite grub in one of our favorite cities! fried pickles at hooters (the best fried pickles i've ever tasted. seriously!) and fried chicken at bubba gumps! can you tell i missed him? eatig all that fried food :] love him.

Lately

Life has been busy. with nothing too exciting besides work. sadly.

we did get to spend an exciting four days acting as suedo parents for my three younger siblings (3,4,13) and chris learned first hand that kids are lots and lots of work. its hard to stay frustrated too long though when little jojo starts loving on you (chris learned that too :])

other than that, I had a busy weekend spent crafting to my hearts content (thanks husband) and am so proud of the results.

I've mentioned before that i bought a really cute, full of character, old desk at a garage sale for $20. and it sat. and sat. and sat. on our back patio for a couple of months. I finally decided that i wanted to do something with it and i'm SO glad i did. I LOVE LOVE LOVE the finished result and feel really proud of myself for completing it and loving it.

part of the reason it sat so long was because i was so nervous to touch it, in fear of ruining it. so i researched. look up tons of distressing and refinishing ideas and tutorials on pinterest (i know, lame right) but finally decided to just go with what i felt would be best. and it worked out perfectly! i'm a little bummed that the old smell didn't completely leave, but i'm sure with a little more pinterest love, i'll find a solution (also, if you aren't on pinterest yet, you should be. but maybe you're better off not being :])

So. Here it is. My desk project. what do you think?!





this is my absolute favorite color, and i love the way it looks next to our red couch and how perfectly it fits in with the rest of our decor. and not to mention that we can now have a place to store our computer, instead of on our kitchen counter :]

Chris leaves for a funeral back home in tennessee tomorrow for the weekend and i'm sad to be without him but glad he gets to go spend time with his family.

other than that, we are heading to conference next weekend and i'm SO excited to be getting away from the daily grind, and back to utah. weirdly, i've missed utah and idaho a lot lately. it will be fun to be in a familiar place with a husband this time, and to be with him for his first conference center experience (we got tickets for a few sessions and i'm SO excited!)

will post pictures upon our return :]